


Let us Not Diminish One Another

by Kizmet



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Not Team!Cap Friendly, Peter is the IM2 kid, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: Tony's not having a good day.  Wanting to help, Peter tells him what their brief meeting at the Stark Expo meant to him.





	Let us Not Diminish One Another

“I’m sure you agree that the last favor I did for you ended up something of an embarrassment, for everyone involved.”

 _‘Bucharest,’_ Tony thought. _‘The political capital I burned trying to make that go away is the gift that just keeps giving.’_

“Ambassador, this isn’t about doing me a favor,” Tony argued smoothly. “This is about bringing the Sokovia Accords into alignment with existing UN referendums. As written, the Accords are woefully inadequate when it comes to the protection of Enhanced children. This isn’t about me, it's about doing the right thing.”

While he waited for the Accords Committee meeting to convene Tony continued making the rounds, attempting to drum up support for the amendments that he needed to push through. _‘I thought I’d have the team behind me for this. I thought these were obvious shortfalls that we could all agree needed correcting. I didn’t think they’d just say screw it, we do what we want. I thought they’d realized, care, that not all Enhanced have that as an option.’_

What little optimism Tony managed to hang on to withered up and died at the sight of Thunderbolt Ross sitting at the head of the table looking smug.

Ross tossed an Arabic newspaper on the table, the front page showed the Falcon and a less easily recognizable Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff fleeing a battle scene as the authorities made their appearance. “Another six lives and sixty thousand dollars damage attributed to the Rogue Avengers,” Ross said. “Why haven’t we caught them yet, Stark?”

“Is this going to be another photoshop incident?” Tony shot back. “Fake news might be all the rage these days but there are still libel laws on the books.”

“Helicarriers dropping out of the sky on Washington D.C. Johannesburg, subject to a reasonless rampage by an out of control ‘hero’. Lagos. Bucharest. Berlin. Leipzig. Dodoma. Ternopil. Layyah. The list just keeps growing,” Ross said.

 _‘At least no one knows about Siberia,’_ Tony thought. _‘It’s bad enough when they throw Rhodey’s injuries in my face. But at least at Leipzig, I still thought it was about principles not just Rogers choosing Bucky Barnes over the rest of the world.’_

Once the meeting moved on to the official agenda Tony quietly contacted FRIDAY. “I’m on it boss,” she whispered. “Encourage a story about them saving someone to trend. Try to bury this one… If I can’t expose it as a fake. See if I can shake any skeletons out of Ross’ closet to distract people.”

 _‘I know some of this shit is fake but not all of it. From where I’m sitting Steve thinks going rogue IS dealing with the underlying problem of Lagos.’_ As much as Steve and his team always meant well their fugitive status only made the odds of compromised or incomplete information worse. With a terrorist label hung on them they had no ability to work with local law-enforcement and, of course, they’d lost a lot of good will. It was inevitable that there was a growing list incidents where the good Rogers’ team did didn’t outweigh the collateral damage they caused in the eyes of the world.

And Ross was eating it up, easily using the Rogues’ missteps to build his powerbase. _'You’re playing right into his hands. Turning your fears about the Accords into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But you don’t care about that, do you Rogers. You don’t care about how your actions are contributing to this. You’ll just say it proves you were right all along.’_

Then Tony went home to the empty Avengers’ Compound. _‘I'm glad you're back at the compound. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine.’_

Vision was making secret rendezvous with Wanda that Tony wasn’t supposed to know about. Rhodey was in DC trying to win some military support away from Ross. Pepper was in Asia, on business for SI. Bruce and Thor hadn’t been seen for years. The rest of them were with Steve. Tony had burned that damned letter the same day he got it but, as satisfying as that had been, it didn’t erase its contents from his memory. _‘More yours that mine, my ass.’_

“Boss…” FRIDAY broke in tentatively. “There’s something you should see.”

“Hit me,” Tony said turning toward the nearest screen. And there was his favorite nightmare playing out in technicolor for the whole world: His parents’ murder. Steve Rogers’ lies. **“He’s my friend.”/”So was I.”**

“Shut it off,” Tony said.

He took a few deep breaths, blocked out thoughts of the liquor cabinet and said: “We have to assume that Ross is going to try to spin this as me collaborating with Rogers’ team-”

“Is he blind?” FRIDAY asked.

“Goal oriented,” Tony corrected. “Regardless of how it played out I went there to help them and that’s to his advantage. So let's get ahead of him, I prioritized the possibility of a unit of Super Soldiers under the control of the guy who really bombed Vienna over Bonnie and Clyde. I- I got blindsided by a personal attack but I didn’t let them walk away.”

“Right, they left over your bleeding body,” FRIDAY said angrily.

“Not helping,” Tony said.

“I’ve got incoming calls from Ms. Potts, Colonel Rhodes-” FRIDAY said and Tony was flashing back to the aftermath of the palladium poisoning incident, the part after everyone was just glad that he wasn’t dying anymore and had started in on **“How could you have kept something like that from me, Tony!?!”**

“Send ‘em to voicemail, FRIDAY,” Tony interrupted.

“-And there’s a call on THAT phone.” FRIDAY added.

“Well, at least Rogers can’t yell at me for keeping secrets,” Tony said tiredly. “Who knows, maybe the world’s ending, it can’t make my day much worse. Put him through.”

“What were you trying to accomplish leaking that? It wasn’t Bucky’s fault. Why are you trying to turn the world against him?” Steve accused. “Those false stories, now this. What are you thinking Tony?”

Tony hung up without saying a word. He started laughing, giggling almost hysterically.

“Boss?” FRIDAY worried.

“Of course it’s my fault,” Tony couldn’t stop laughing. He dropped his phone and walked outside, leaving FRIDAY, her sensors and her speakers, behind. He did it knowing it would only freak her out worse. _‘At least I don’t have to hear how I’m failing her, hurting her because I can’t hack it. ‘Stark men are made of Iron,’ right Dad?’_

He sat down on the steps in front of the Compound. He’d burned the letter Steve sent but all he could do with the words written on in it was shove them into an increasingly overflowing lockbox in the back of his head and tonight the lock wasn’t going to hold.

**“You gotta watch your back with this guy. There's a chance he's gonna break it.”**

**“Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?”**

**“Oh God, Tony! Every time. Every time I think you see things the right way…”**

**“You think you fight for us. You just fight for yourself.”**

**“Do me a favor. Try not to bring it to life.”**

**“Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.”**

**“I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark.”**

**“I'm sorry. I'm not that kind of doctor.”**

**“I'm going to sleep downstairs. Tinker with that.”**

**“You don’t deserve to wear one of these!”**

**“You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”**

**“Iron Man: Yes. Tony Stark: Not recommended.”**  

**“When I ordered that hit on you, I worried that I was killing the golden goose.”**

_‘It’s always my fault isn’t it?’_ Tony realized. _’And, when it’s me, mitigating circumstances and good intentions don’t mean a damn thing.’_

 

* * *

 

Tony was still sitting on the front steps of the Avengers Compound hours later, when a pair of headlights turned up the private drive. _‘The day I’m having, odds are it's an assassin,’_ Tony thought but he didn’t get up.

Peter Parker tumbled out of the nondescript car and ran over to him. “Mr. Stark- um- are you?” the kid cringed at asking if Tony was okay when it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t.

Tony squinted a little at the car, “Your Aunt drove you? I thought she hated me?”

“You’re not her favorite person,” Peter admitted reluctantly. “But- on TV- we saw… And then some reporter tried to get a reaction from Ms. Potts. She ‘no commented’ but Taipei 101 was in the background and… Is there anything I can do? Should you go inside? Or I could get you a jacket? It’s getting sort of cold.”

Tony shook his head. Peter sat down on the steps beside him. The lights on May’s car turned off and Tony thought, _‘Maybe she doesn’t totally hate me, even if she has every reason to.’_

The silence stretched out for a long time. A cold wind picked up, blowing clouds across the moon. Peter shivered a little and Tony imagined that May wasn’t much more comfortable sitting in her car with the heater off. He got up stiffly. “Why don’t you give your Aunt a tour of the place, since you’re both here,” he said.

“You could-”

Tony shook his head. “Let’s not push my luck.” He walked inside leaving the door open while Peter went over to the car and extended his invitation May. After a moment of consideration Tony decided that the conference rooms were the least interesting place in the whole Compound and picked one to camp out in. _‘There’s always your bedroom,’_ his brain decided to helpfully remind him. _‘You know that place right beside nine empty rooms? Oh right, that’s why you sleep on the couch in the lab.’_ Still, knowing that his lab was one of Peter’s favorite places in the compound and he’d probably want to show it to May wasn’t a thought that hurt.

Tony was surprised when Peter tracked him down in less than fifteen minutes. “Aunt May said she was tired. So I showed her one of the guest rooms,” he said. “That’s okay with you right? If we both crash here tonight? It’s a long drive back to the city.”

“Yeah, yeah of course,” Tony said. “Mi casa es su casa.”

For a moment it looked like Peter was thinking about settling back into the silent compainsonship he’d offered outside but he kept shooting sidelong looks at Tony.

“Something on your mind, kid?” Tony asked after the third or forth repetition.

“You- um- you probably don’t remember the first time we met,” Peter stammered.

“Dragging you into the shitfest that was Leipzig? Hard to forget,” Tony snorted.

Peter shook his head. “The Stark Expo, the one the bad guys crashed,” he said. “I begged May and Ben to take me for weeks, wore my Halloween costume… um…” Peter flushed in embarrassment.

“You were the kid in the Iron Man get-up?”

“You remember?” Peter’s flush transformed into an incandescent smile.

Tony decided not to mention how close that had been. How he’d beaten himself up later because he’d know the drone had singled out the kid because of that damned mask.

“It probably doesn’t seem like much. Not next to- I mean- you saved my life!” Peter said. “But um- May and Ben took me back to the therapist I used to talk to about my parents, they were really worried I’d be traumatized but- But I was fine, better than fine. You didn’t just save me you made me feel like I was the hero too, not like a victim.”

Tony remembered saying ‘Good job kid,’ as he headed out after yet another drone. He’d wondered later if the kid’s parents would sue him for encouraging reckless behavior or something. That Peter was telling him he’d done a good thing then barely computed.

“A few years later the bullying at school got really bad,” Peter continued. “There were times when I wanted to paint 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ over the doors to my middle school because that’s what it felt like to me.” He shrugged. “One of the things I’d use to get me out of bed in the mornings was telling myself that if I could stand up to a Hammerdrone I could stand up to Flash Thompson. Maybe it sounds sort of stupid but it really helped me that you made me feel ten feet tall that night. I - I just wanted you to know that.”

Tony thought about all the times he’d been made to feel small, stupid and insignificant. “No,” he said. “It’s not stupid at all. I'm- I'm glad I helped.  And thanks- for telling me.”


End file.
